The Rolling Stones: Roll Them Bones

(5 of 7)

The Stones are aware of the risks. What looked cool, dodgy, outrageous a while back could look antique and stupid now, more like a Monty Python skit. "The parody aspects of it are overwhelming," Keith admits. "It'll kill the music, you know?" Watching the Stones take their chances with all this -- for revenue, for glory and for something more -- has become a new part of the show. They could become what they used to mock.

What will save them is that in a positive way, in a way that rock was never expected to tolerate, they are acting their age. The fan keeps coming back to Slipping Away and thinks about the deaths in the band family. There was, famously, the passing of Brian Jones, one of the formative members and chief sybarites, overdosed in 1969, found dead floating in his swimming pool. And more recently and just as crucially, there was Ian Stewart, the keyboard player, who died of a heart attack in 1985.

"That was probably the final nail," says Keith. "That really took the glue and the heart out of us all. It has taken us this long to reconcile being able to put the Stones together without him. Nobody knows much about Stu out there, but to the boys in the band, the Stones was his band. He was a real taskmaster, strictly rhythm and blues, jazz. You could see his face when you were writing, and if it sounded like a pop song, you knew he was cursing under his breath. In a way, we're all still working for Stu."

Easy to imagine Stewart smiling over Slipping Away. Easy, too, to hear such a stalwart pro lose patience with all this fretting about age and nostalgia. That may be the better way. Play the music, keep it up front and don't sweat the future. "Talent will survive," says Aretha Franklin, who mounted a successful tour herself this summer. "People with true talents and gifts will stand the test of longevity, with good business management." Right. Leave the fretting to everyone else. There is, indeed, a good measure of concern to go around.

Even Jagger, when pressed, can come out with an observation, characteristically jaded and spoken like rock's foremost mandarin. "There's not a lot in rock that is new," he says. "It's the same kind of chord sequences and the same kind of rhythm references and the same recycling of subject matter. But I don't think it's a problem. I mean, traditional musical forms like folk music in three chords or blues are endearing to Americans. They find some comfort in them."

Neil Young, who has a new album coming out in October, isn't bothered about restrictions of form, or of age. "Rock 'n' roll is about life, and age is a state of mind," he says. "The music's still wide open. All you need is the nerve, the nerve to do what you want to do." It takes more than nerve, though, to get played on the radio. Ken Barnes, editor of the industry trade magazine Radio & Records, figures that at least 40% of what is available to the whole American radio audience is "classic" or "oldies" rock. Demographics restrict station playlists and tie up formats; besides, as Barnes puts it, "the sheer cultural weight of what we're now calling classic rock is somewhat stifling."